Preview: Wk 2 @ Jets

Almost certainly their best player, playing the position their former best player used to play [USA Today]

Date: 9/20
Location: East Rutherford, NJ
Kickoff: 10 AM PT
TV: FOX, or wherever you stream it illegally

The worst part about playing the Jets is that it means you’re required to watch at least one Jets game this season. But despite their lack of aesthetic appeal, their historically bad injury luck, their young quarterback missing three games with mono (lol), and the fact that they played in a division with two double-digit win teams, the Jets still managed to scrape together a 7-9 record last year on the heels of a 6-2 finish. So perhaps there’s more than meets the eye with this squad? 

Or maybe not.

INJURY REPORT

As of Wednesday: Despite playing all of the second half, George Kittle was diagnosed with a knee sprain after the game. He’s unlikely to practice this week and—while he remains optimistic—his status for the game is unclear… even more shocking—although it explains why they worked out four corners this week—Richard Sherman was placed on short-term IR on Wednesday with what is supposedly a calf injury. He won’t be eligible to return until the Dolphins game in week 5… in his stead, Ahkello Witherspoon is expected to start, that is if he passes the concussion protocol, while Jason Verrett, our would-be next corner up, deals with a hamstring injury. Neither are practicing on Wednesday, but either or both could play Sunday… Richie James’ hamstring injury kept him out of practice on Wednesday. My guess would be he doesn’t play, but there’s a shot… Deebo Samuel, placed on short-term IR before the Cardinals game, will have to sit out two more games. The earliest he’s eligible to return is the early October night game against the Eagles… On the bright side, Ben Garland and Brandon Aiyuk both practiced in full on Wednesday. Barring any setbacks, they seem on track to make their 2020 debuts (or for Aiyuk, his NFL debut) this weekend.

I’m not going to go into the Jets’ injury report except to say the Le’Veon Bell was put on short-term IR with a hamstring injury meaning that the Jets’ starting running back in this game could be… Frank Gore(!!!).

NEW GUYS

On Tuesday the Niners signed receiver Mohamed Sanu to a one-year deal. Last year, Sanu was the guy the Niners were after at the trade deadline but—to our benefit—the Patriots outbid us, and we instead got Emmanuel Sanders. While I wouldn’t hold out hope that Sanu makes a Sanders-like impact, at 6-2, 215 pounds, Sanu is a big-bodied possession receiver who will bring value to the offense with his route-running ability, sure hands, and his physical nature on underneath routes. While not an electric athlete or particularly dynamic with the ball in his hands, he’ll bring a veteran presence to our green receiving corps. 

COVID regulations mean Sanu won’t be able to practice with the Niners until Friday, but he could still see limited snaps this weekend given his knowledge of Shanahan’s playbook from their time together in Atlanta. Once he sees the field, Sanu will likely be a contested catch specialist—taking some snaps at X and perhaps playing some of the big slot role that was envisioned for Jalen Hurd/Jauan Jennings. At the moment, he’s an emergency bandaid for our many injury woes. As our receiving corps returns to health it’s harder to say what his role will be. Finally—while it is way too early to imagine him deeply involved in our offense—it’s worth noting that Sanu has an excellent arm. Whether out of the wildcat or on gadget plays, Sanu has a career passing line of 7-of-8 for 233 yards and 4 touchdowns and a perfect QB rating. 

Just sayin. 

To bolster our dwindling cornerback room, the Niners have officially moved Dontae Johnson up to the active roster (he was a practice squad game day pull-up last Sunday). FWIW, the blocked punt likely wasn’t his fault. Regardless, I am still somewhat terrified of seeing him on defense considering he started all 16 games for us in 2017 and routinely got roasted. He’s had two years since then. I’ll trust the staff that he’s improved vastly during that time. For anyone asking “well why don’t we bring up Tim Harris from the practice squad?”, I was thinking the same thing… until I saw he was put on the practice squad/IR just this week with a calf injury. The Niners added two more CBs to the practice squad to replace Harris and Johnson and scooped up Ken Webster from the Dolphins practice squad and onto our active roster. Webster was a 2019 seventh-round pick by the Patriots, who—after being cut—was picked up by the Dolphins and started 5 games last year. I have never seen him play and have absolutely no idea what he brings to the table. Fingers crossed he doesn’t have to see the field.

DEFENSE

The Jets had one of the worst offenses in the league last year, ranking dead-last in Offensive DVOA, dead-last in passing DVOA, and second-to-last in rushing DVOA (to only the Dolphins, who were purposefully a JV squad for the first half of the year).

If there’s hope it’s that would-be franchise QB Sam Darnold was 9th-best in the league against zone coverage and 32nd against man. That means (a) the Bills and Patriots absolutely took his goddamn lunch, and (b) the Jets probably didn’t have the talent to be good on offense last year anyway (yes, this counts as hope when you’re a Jets fan). Team brass responded by bringing in six new starters on offense, including four(!) new offensive linemen, size-speed ratio boss Denzel Mims, and Breshad Perriman—who had a career year last season in Tampa… but that was as a fourth option in a loaded Bruce Arians offense. These additions, combined with the reliable but unspectacular slot play of Jamison Crowder, the return of tight end Chris Herndon—who showed promise as a rookie before missing all but 18 snaps of last year due to suspension and injury—and a (hopefully) healthy season from Darnold should have the Jets’ offensive arrow pointing up because, well... there is literally no way it could get any worse.

But personnel isn’t the only problem. Under Gase, the Jets have had the pleasure of an offense that is both stubborn and predictable—leading to one of the single-worst early-down success rates in the league and an average third down distance coming in at 8.1(!) yards to go. That is not a combo you want. All last year the Jets were awful on first down, which set up second-and-longs where they’d usually go into heavy personnel and—despite all data saying that you should pass on second-and-long—call an unsuccessful run play, which would in turn lead to them getting wrecked on third-and-long. It was a vicious cycle and one that Gase seemed uninterested in stopping.

Ultimately, this is a group of skill players that you need to scheme open, and the Jets just have not created many easy completions. Darnold’s raw stats may be ugly, but he actually ranked 15th in the league in output over expected completion percentage (there’s that Jets hope again), but his expected completion percentage was a meager 36th of 39 qualifiers. You’d think play action would help, but out of their heavy sets the Jets were near the bottom of the league in terms of pass-likelihood, and when they did throw out of 12, 13, or 21 personnel, they typically did it from under center—this despite Darnold having otherworldly production (on small sample sizes) when throwing from those sets out of the gun (12.0 YPA and a near-perfect 156.3 QB rating). 

But perhaps the Jets are trying to change. In week one, they seemed to lean more gun-heavy with the intent of opening things up a bit. While that may give them some long-term hope, it clearly didn’t amount to much against the Bills. The Jets totaled 254 yards of offense on 4.8 YPP, 69 of which came on this short catch and run to Jamison Crowder. 

Jamison Crowder goes 69-yards to the 🏠

(via @NFL)pic.twitter.com/L0y5RMDJx2

— B/R Gridiron (@brgridiron) September 13, 2020

On passes with air travel upwards of 15 yards, the Jets were 1-for-6 with an interception last week. On throws over 30 yards IN HIS CAREER Darnold is 6-30 with four touchdowns and three picks. With that in mind and their top tailback injured, I’d expect them to try and dink-and-dunk against us—hoping for better success against our defense as we blitz less and play more zone. Even without Sherman, I’d expect the Niners to stress fundamentals and tendencies in this game after a sloppy finish against the Cardinals. Our DL missed DeFo in the opener; against a Jets’ OL that’s still getting settled, we need a good showing upfront if our team’s going to have anywhere near the ceiling that we’d like to this year.

Despite having potential, Darnold has—all the way since college—consistently been a turnover machine, especially when trying to freelance while under pressure. Given this fact, plus Gase’s predictability and the likelihood for long downs and distances, a well-timed blitz or two could pay dividends. Darnold fumbled 11 times in only 13 games last year, so if he scrambles look for more Kwon Alexander karate chop action (despite some issues last week, Kwon does create splash plays and forced at least two fumbles against the Cards). In general, I think all three of our linebackers will have to play well, as they’ll be tasked with handling a lot of underneath work and their coverage skills will be even more important with our corners banged up. With the injuries we have at the position, the Jets will surely try and test our boundaries, but it’s TBD if they have the talent to do so. Hopefully our strength in the front seven and deep zone scheme on the back-end will take the pressure off our new corners. Overall, this is still their weakness versus our strength, so it should be a game where we can iron out some kinks, adjust to what we want to do differently this year on defense, and settle down after last week’s late-game struggles.

DEFENSE

In contrast to the Jets’ offense, the defense impressed in its first year under Gregg Williams. While the D—just like the team’s overall record—benefited from an easy schedule that included facing only three teams in the top 14 in passing DVOA all year, the Jets still finished the season 11th in Defensive DVOA, 20th in Passing DVOA, and 2nd in Rushing DVOA. This was despite being the most injury-affected defense in the league.

Give Gregg Williams credit. Sure, he is almost certainly a douche, and looks like a bad guy from a nineties teen movie, and—given the fact that he’s coached for 7 teams in the past 12 years—probably hard to work with; and yeah, while he was with the Saints he put out bounties on our players during the 2012 playoffs and later wrote it off as “nothing that hadn’t been done before;” and okay, when the Browns fired their head coach and offensive coordinator and promoted Williams to interim HC simply because he was the only warm body left, he may have taken the time—in his very first press conference as HC—to boast/probably lie about how, despite his 17-31 career record, he was in such high demand that he’d received 11 head coaching offers, four of which said he “didn’t even have to interview, just show up and sign the contract.” Despite all that… ah, I forgot what I was gonna say.  

Williams runs an aggressive 3-4 zone-blitzing scheme. Last year he sent extra dudes at the fourth-highest rate in the league, succeeding both when his defense blitzed and when it bluffed looks pre-snap to bait bad throws underneath. In almost direct contrast to our scheme, which uses a four-man pass rush with little blitzing and alternates deep coverage looks to take away the big play first, the Jets—while running the fifth-most zone coverage in the league—ran considerably more Cover 2 than Cover 4. While we choose to rally up from deep-to-short, they’re hunting for turnovers by crowding the shorter zones and trusting that their extra rushers will get home before they can get beat over the top with the deep ball.

Their run defense is the unit’s obvious strength, which is impressive considering the Jets ran their nickel defense for 77% of their snaps in 2019, a strategy which both mitigated the loss of free agent linebacker CJ Moseley—who missed all but two games last year then opted out of this season—and got Brian Poole—one of the best nickel corners in the game—on the field more often. They were able to play small while excelling against the run because (a) they have a strong, big-bodied DL that ranked best in the league in terms of adjusted line yards against the run, and (b) they had swiss-army knife Jamal Adams who played mostly around the LOS.

In addition to his ability against the run and in coverage, Adams was second on the team in sacks last season and led all Jets in QB hits. There’s some hope that rookie DE Jabari Zuniga could become a pass rush presence sooner rather than later, but he got put on IR on Monday. There’s also optimism that Quinnen Williams, last year’s 3rd overall pick, will add some pressure capability with the increased maturation and slimmed-down frame that he’s sported this off-season, but that didn’t translate in the opener. Realistically, replacing Adams will largely rely on how Marcus Maye—the team’s second-best defensive player last year—takes over Adams’ old role near the LOS. With 10 tackles, 2 sacks, 2 TFLs, 2 pass deflections, and a forced fumble in the opener, the results have been largely positive. Losing Adams may not be as big a blow as expected, and their run defense at least—after holding the Bills running backs to 2.3 YPC in the opener—seems to be just as stout as last year.

However, against the pass there are question marks, the biggest of which being the team’s cornerbacks. Other than Poole, the Jets are relying on Blessaun “someone’s parents liked God” Austin—a potential breakout second-rounder who performed well as a rookie—and Pierre Desir—who was just jettisoned from the Colts one year into a three-year extension. The group is unproven and just allowed Bills receivers to account for 23 receptions and 247 yards of Josh Allen’s career-high 312 passing yards last week. It would be nice to test them in the passing game. We’ll see if we have enough healthy bodies out wide to do so.

While it would be nice to have a week 2 foe that we could easily shred on the ground and hit over the top for some confidence-boosting play action bombs (see: 2019 Bengals), we’re going to have to execute to consistently move the ball in this one. This defense could actually be good. While Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and (checks notes) Ryan Fitzpatrick(?) all had success as running quarterbacks against this defense, the Jets haven’t allowed a 100-yard rusher (Ezekiel Elliott) since week 6 of last year. They’re big and stout against the run but have pass rush questions and potential coverage issues in their back seven. This is a game where we may need to pass to open up the running game, and with a zone blitz scheme that likes to send extra rushers and drop underneath defenders into unexpected spots (aka the 2019 Jimmy G interception blueprint), our offense would benefit in a big way if our quarterback can muster a bounce back game on the road.

The Niners are considerably more talented than the Jets. After last week’s disappointment, this would be a great chance to make that abundantly clear. But in order to make this game delightfully boring and drama-free, our offense—and in particular our passing game—will have to be much more in sync than it was last week. The laundry list of injuries, but they can either be something that derails us as a team or an opportunity for backups to get valuable snaps—which in turn gives us more depth as the season goes on. Let’s hope it’s the latter.

Go Niners 👍🏈